


That Would Be Telling

by GloriaGilbertPatch



Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-13
Packaged: 2018-05-26 12:49:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6240034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GloriaGilbertPatch/pseuds/GloriaGilbertPatch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 2x16, Scottie mentions an incident in law school involving Harvey's younger brother. My interpretation of how that went down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Would Be Telling

**Author's Note:**

> Nothing here is mine. Least of all Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP.

Years later, Dana Scott would wonder why she hadn’t screamed.

It was an image of Harvey Specter that she’d never seen before, one that terrified her and broke her heart.

She’d raced across town once he’d called, only to find him crouched on the floor in the bathroom, bowed over and retching into the toilet – but unlike the handful of times she’d seen him sick from drinking, or the flu, he looked scared and drained and on the verge of falling completely apart.

“Harvey, oh my God, what’s wrong?” she asked in shock, kneeling behind him and resting what she hoped was a calming hand on the center of his back. He didn’t answer right away, his breathing still harsh, and she pushed down her internal need to panic because that clearly was not going to fix things. Instead, she rubbed his back slowly, doing her best to imitate her sister-in-law’s tenderness with the baby, silently willing him to relax enough to talk to her.

When he did manage to look up at her though, his face desperate and broken, she almost wished he hadn’t.

“It’s Marcus,” he said finally. “He’s sick, the idiot ignored his symptoms for – anyway, he needs some weird drug that Dad’s insurance doesn’t cover because it’s too _experimental_ or something, but nothing else is working, but it’s _expensive_ , and Dad doesn’t have the money, and – ” He was starting to get worked up again, and Dana rubbed his back a little more.

“Shh, it’s okay, Harvey, it’s going to be okay.”

“No, Scottie, it’s not. He’s my brother. He’s sick. I have to take care of him. It’s just – Jessica gave me the money for the full year up front, and I don’t want to do it, but…”

“Are you insane? She gave you that money to pay for school; how do you think she’s gonna feel if she finds out you couldn’t enroll next semester because you spent it on something else?”

“It’s my brother. He’s family. I can’t – look, nothing I want for myself is more important than him getting better, okay?”

Dana looked at him a long moment before nodding her agreement.

“How much does he need?”

“Almost ten grand.”

“I’ll lend it to you.”

“Scottie…”

“What? I spent my summer at Cravath; you know I have the money.”

“Yeah, and you know I can’t pay you back.”

“Pay when you can; your brother needs you now.”

“And what about you, huh? Yeah, you have the money, but that’s your living expenses for the rest of the year. I can’t take that.”

“So I have to borrow some cash from my parents. There are worse things. Like you not finishing law school because you couldn’t pay for your _last_ semester.”

“Oh, so now you have me taking money from your parents?”

“No, I have you _borrowing_ money from me to pay for your brother’s emergency. If I end up making ends meet borrowing from my parents, then…”

“Then they’re going to ask you what happened to all the money you made this summer, and you’re gonna tell them that you gave it to me because I can’t take care of my own family.”

“Harvey, it’s not like that.”

“Oh yeah? Was it not like that when they were in town and we went out to dinner and your dad paid? Because that was pretty damned humiliating.”

“Harvey, we’re _students_. They’re my _parents_. There’s nothing humiliating about letting them buy us dinner.”

“Yeah, Scottie, and I’m your _boyfriend_ , and I was meeting your _father_ , and I couldn’t even _offer_ to pay because I flat-out would not have been able to afford it if he’d let me.”

“Oh my God are you still upset about that? Harvey, come on, Dad knows you’re in school. He doesn’t think less of you for that! It’s a _normal_ thing.”

“Maybe in your world, it’s normal, but my parents never ran up a four-hundred-dollar tab taking anyone out to dinner.”

“I am not going to apologize for the fact that my parents have money.”

“I’m not asking you to; I’m just not taking it.”

“Harvey. This is _insane_. You have _one_ semester left before you will graduate in the top ten of your class at Harvard Law School. You cannot _drop out_ because you were too proud to borrow money.”

“I have a month and a half before next semester’s bill is due. I’ll find a way to make the money.”

“You’re going to make $10,000 in six weeks without breaking the ABA working hour restrictions? Without breaking _the law_?”

“Well, I’m going to have to, because get it through your head, Scottie: _I am not taking your money_.”

She sighed.

“Fine. It’s your call. I’m not trying to imply it’s not. I just…”

“I know,” he said quietly. “It’s not that…it’s just that he needs the money, and I _have_ it, and he’s my little brother, you know?”

“I know,” she said softly, turning around so that they were both sitting back, leaning against the bathtub.

“You want me to get you a glass of water?” she asked after a couple of minutes of quiet. Harvey shook his head.

“I can do it,” he said, though he made no move to get up. Dana nodded a little and leaned her head on his shoulder, nudging closer until he put his arm around her.

“Your mouth must taste terrible,” she commented dryly, and elicited a surprised bark of a laugh.

“It’s not exactly an all-star moment,” he agreed.

“Let me get you some water,” she said again, extracting herself from his embrace and quickly crossing the apartment for the kitchen. She pulled the Brita out of the fridge and poured him a big glass, but when she headed back to the bathroom she saw that the room was empty. Harvey had relocated to the bedroom and was sitting on the edge of his bed.

“Here you go,” she said, placing the glass on the bedside table, nodding slightly as if to emphasize her point.

“Thanks, Scottie,” he replied quietly. She wavered briefly before sitting down next to him.

“You gonna be okay?”

He nodded.

“Yeah, I just – I don’t know exactly what – but I feel better. Just tired.”

“You want me to stay?”

“You don’t have to. I’ll be fine.”

Dana turned her head away and inwardly rolled her eyes.

“I didn’t ask if I _had_ to. I asked if you _wanted_ me to.”

She let the words hang in the air for a tense moment and, finally, Harvey nodded, sneaking his arm around her again.

She would have liked to hold him close to her; she would have liked to spoon him while they slept; but this was Harvey and comforting Harvey had never worked that way. For a man who enjoyed playing the hero so often, he sure did despise needing one. So she let him hold her, instead, the smooth, warm skin of her back pressing into his chest, her body relaxing against his. If the only way to protect Harvey was to make him feel that he was protecting her, then so be it, and she’d do her best to sleep in his arms even as she wracked her brain trying to figure out a way for him to pay for Marcus’s medicine and still pay for school.

Because he’d try, but his pride was too much of a problem for him to find an answer. And because no one worked under twenty hours a week for six weeks and made ten grand, after taxes, doing something legal.

She woke up before him – she always did – and got out of bed to make the breakfast she knew he’d require to be functional. The task, of course, was made significantly more difficult by the fact that there was no food in the place but a bag of coffee, a stick of butter, and a Styrofoam box of leftovers that Dana really didn’t want to investigate. Sighing, she glanced at the clock and quickly put her clothes on. She was almost positive she had time to run to the grocery store and buy at least some eggs and bacon. Although, she considered as she quietly left the apartment, tucking his spare key in her jacket pocket, given that he was about to give all his money away it might be the right thing to do to buy him a full set of groceries.

Luckily Harvey liked to sleep late even on mornings that didn’t immediately follow terrifying panic attacks, so Dana was able to slip back into the apartment without his having noticed she’d left, and she immediately got to work. She was sitting at the table, one foot propped up on the chair beside her, drinking a cup of coffee, nibbling on a strip of bacon and forcing herself not to count the calories when he walked in.

“I made coffee. And eggs. And bacon,” she said, gesturing with the strip in her hand. Harvey raised his eyebrows.

“Oh, you did, did you?” He went over to the stove and plucked a strip of bacon himself before pulling a fork out of the drawer and diving into the scrambled eggs.

“Harvey. Plate?”

“What?” he said, with his mouth full. “It’s just me and you.” He put his fork down on the counter and got a mug of coffee, took a sip and made a face.

“Your coffee’s so gross, Scottie; it tastes like motorcycle oil.”

Dana shrugged.

“So don’t drink it, then.”

“What kind of self-respecting 3L would I be if I did that, hmm?”

“The kind who – ” She broke off, checking herself. Don’t let him feel vulnerable. “Never mind. I have five hundred pages to read on comparative corporate governance, and listening to you criticize my cooking is not going to get that done.”

“Comparative corporate governance? Really?”

“Some of us like not to look like idiots when we show up in seminar, Harvey; you should try it.” She got up from the table, popped another strip of bacon into her mouth, and put her jacket back on. “I’ll see you later, okay? And hey – tell Marcus I hope he feels better.”

He nodded, watching her go, and, frustrations about Harvey’s future aside, Dana really did hope the kid got well soon. She had a certain fondness for Harvey’s little brother, and while she’d never care about him quite the way she did Harvey, there was something incredibly appealing in the way Marcus wore his heart on his sleeve.

She’d seen him a couple of times over the summer, vaguely awkward dinners that she paid for before calling Harvey – stuck doing a federal internship up in Boston – to keep him updated. It was clear that Marcus, like Harvey, wasn’t doing very well with their parents’ divorce, but Marcus, unlike Harvey, wasn’t afraid to talk about it.

More importantly, Marcus, unlike Harvey, didn’t hate his mother or blame her for everything that had gone wrong, and Marcus, _like_ Harvey, wasn’t about to let his brother miss out on his own account.

And she was pretty sure she still had his phone number.

Three weeks later, when a perfectly healthy Marcus Specter called up his brother to let him know that the check was in the mail, Dana smiled and feigned surprise at Harvey’s good news. And three days after that, when the letter came and Harvey brought the check to the bank, she smiled again at the palpable relief he didn’t show at all.

It was the right thing to do. He never had to know.


End file.
